he imprinted upon its seraph beauty a fervent and holy kiss. Tears rained plentifully from the eyes of the spectators, and few were there present that did not thrill with delight to witness the union of souls so passionate and sincere. * * * * * Time hurries on alike through good and ill, and carries with it a certain solace to the wounded heart. It softens feuds; consoles affections blighted; and spreads upon the horrors of the past a veil of sweet oblivion. Several weeks had passed over the events above recorded, and summer smiled profusely over the earth; when in the cool hour of evening, about the time of sunset, a youth and damsel stood upon a little terrace at the back of the Apothecary's dwelling, quietly watching his departure. The youth was tall and well proportioned, and of a noble, though exceeding pale and melancholy aspect; yet the fond clasp which he held of the fair and fragile form beside him, and the look of love with which he hung over her, showed that his earthly affections, at least, were gratified to the full. The right hand of the maiden rested on the shoulder of her lover, into whose face she gazed with a look of ineffable sweetness and admiration, as he spoke to her of the solemn mysteries of the universe, of which his divine studies had made him an accomplished master. Long they stood, absorbed in such sweet converse, until the stars came forth into the blue firmament, and the dews of twilight glittered on the flowers with which the garden abounded. The scene was altogether in keeping with the most classic land, and the group was perfectly Raffaelesque ; yet were they of the humblest personages of our drama--The Apothecary's daughter and the Clerk of Wigston. THE POET'S LAMENT ON RETURNING TO BIRMINGHAM AFTER MANY YEARS' ABSENCE. BY THOMAS RAGG. OH give me back the green fields Where I was wont to stray, And gather star-eyed daisies Upon my sunny way! I see your stately houses But the green fields, where are they' Oh give me back the tall trees, ENQUIRY INTO THE ORIGIN AND HISTORY OF THE Ancient Britons, and of British Bruidism. BY THOS. RAGG. Continued from page 94. To the reader who has passed with me through our ancient chronicles, and attentively considered their bearings upon each other, I think I can now promise something of greater interest as we enter farther into our subject, and prepare the way for the dawning of light. Much has been written by learned individuals to prove the Eastern origin of the whole Celtic race, Eastern not only as regards the first migration of all the posterity of Noah from the region of Ararat (whether that region was in China or Armenia) but as having come from oriental climes at a later date than the Cimmerians, the Northern descendents of Gomer. Our only Celtic traditions are opposed to this hypothesis. They relate that the sixth son of Japhet, by name Samotheus, (having previously founded the kingdom of Celtica) came over to Britain as the head of the Samothei,—a race of philosophers; and that after his own name he called the island Samothea. To him succeeded Magus, the founder of the Magi; to him his son SARRON, the founder of the Sarronides : whose son DRUIS, a man of consummate wisdom, took up his abode in Anglesea (Mona,) and instituted the sect of the Druids; leaving it to his son BARDUS, who was much skilled in music, to commence the order of bards. This is certainly one of the most summary methods of founding the various races of priests and philosophers of the ancient world which stands upon record; and the only wonder is, how in the darkest ages of monkish fables such follies could pass current. The remaining records, however, down to the time when Britain is reported to have been peopled by the "noble stock of Troy the Great," are, in many respects, still more extravagant. After inventing the fable of Samotheus to account for the Island having once been called Samothea, the marvel writers of the middle ages looked out for another mythological tale, to give us a reason for its bearing the name of Albion, from some more direct cause than the whiteness of its cliffs. Modern geology has, indeed, shewn us that we ought to look elsewhere for that name, though that origin was once so generally agreed upon; as in all probability at the time it was prevalent, the cliffs of Britain presented not so remarkable an appearance. The action of the waves which have now washed away the obtruding portions of our coast to so great an extent, and exposed our white cliffs to view, would have removed but little of the earth that hindered their passage so near to the era of the deluge; at which time, there is sufficient reason to believe, that every coast sloped gradually downwards till it met the sea. Yet, wherever we must look for the origin of the name of Albion, none, I think, of my readers will agree with those traditions of which the following is the condensed substance. After king BARDUS, there was no king in Britain for about three hundred and twelve years; at the end of which period, a gigantic son of Neptune, named ALBION, landed in the Isle, and conquered the Samotheans and Celtae; and with his brother BERGION who ruled over Ireland and the Orkneys, was, after committing many enormities, slain by Hercules in Spain. The giants who inhabited Albion then lived in a wild state without a monarch, till fortune was kind enough to send to the Island a ship laden with the fifty daughters of king Danaus of Egypt, which ladies, for the crime of killing their husbands, were committed to the mercy of the waves. These women were afterwards wedded by the Albionites; and from them sprung a race rather more civilized, who retained possession of the Island till the landing of Brutus Æneas. Were there no better evidence than these traditions to be brought forward in favour of our Celtic origin, the point must have been given up at once without dispute. Such oral histories are, as has been well observed," almost universally nothing more than an emblematic or enigmatic representation of the facts on which they are founded; and frequently the riddle is so absurd or so obscure, that no ingenuity is capable of giving a satisfactory interpretation of it." It might, indeed, be considered an easier task to find out the meaning of the Egyptian hyeroglyphics, than to understand thoroughly what was thus handed down from age to age by the early inhabitants of the post-diluvian world. In the one instance, the same characters have a synonimous meaning, and may, when that meaning is discovered, lead to the unravelling of similar intricacies. In the other, as the figures and symbols have doubtless varied according to the endless varieties in the dispositions, habits, feelings, and imaginations of the living channels through which they were transmitted, the complete clearing away of all difficulties from one, may not aid us a single step towards threading our way through any of the rest. There is, however, other and better evidence in favour of our Celtic origin than those vague fables I have abstracted above; and to give a summary of that evidence, and to examine whether it be tenable or not, is now the object I have in view. The geographical position of nations is a matter worthy of great consideration, in tracing the migration of early tribes from one country. to another. The position of Britain, as regards the continent of Europe, is such as makes it most natural to suppose that its original inhabitants might have migrated either from Teutonic or Celtic countries, from Scandinavia, Gaul, or Spain. While nothing short of opposing evidence ought to induce the belief that they were adventurers from a more distant land, whether that land be considered as Egypt, Phoenicia, Babylon, or Troy. The manners and customs of nations, and the resemblance they bear to each other, is also a subject which bears with considerable force on the question in hand. It is asserted by Cæsar, the first among those who have the character of being correct historians,—whatever degree of truth that assertion may possess-that the manners and customs of the Britons in his days were exactly similar to those of their neighbours the Gauls. And granting what we have before intimated, that Cæsar could not become thoroughly acquainted with these in the course of a military campaign, yet, so close a resemblance as to give him the idea of exact similarity, is not readily to be accounted for, if the nations were quite distinct in their oirgin. The strongest evidence in favour of the Celtic origin of the Britons is, nevertheless, to be found in the language spoken by the two nations being (as asserted by Cæsar) essentially the same. Whatever view we take of the dispersion from Babel-whether with the learned we consider the confounding of speech a labial failure, or adopt the more popular view of its being a real confusion of tongues, from which first proceeded the endless varieties in language and dialect which have since obtained in the world, one thing is certain, that in very early ages the articulate sounds to which the different races of men arbitrarily fixed particular meanings, differed exceedingly. There is consequently strong presumptive evidence that distinct people, speaking one common language, were originally of one tribe. The different languages spoken by different races of the Britons themselves, of which we have even in the present day sufficient evidence, in the entire dissimilarity between the original Welsh and the Gaelic of the Scottish Highlanders, certainly give us reason to suppose that Cæsar and the historians who succeeded him had not very accurately observed what they professed to record; which will, to say the least, qualify their evidence. And what I remarked in my first paper, that " thousand years intercourse between nations who had no grammar or lexicon to refer to as a standard, might bring about a resemblance in language, especially as Britain was at that time the academy of the West," will also serve to qualify the grand inference which has been deduced from the subject, that the nations were originally one. There are, however, other considerations which here obtrude themselves upon a ६. |